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What point would your post serve without reference to your web-site? It is clearly an advertisement. I will confirm my guess with the moderator that threw the thread that you started, but that won't be today.

DBForums is a place to ask questions, discuss ideas, etc. It is not free advertising space. We have had far too many spammers take advantage of us, using our goodwill and bandwidth to advance their personal goals.

I'd be willing to restore your thread in the Marketplace forum if you would like, or if you'd like to place an advertisement, I can have one of the marketing people contact you.

"Excel is part of Microsoft's Office suite and interfaces with any ODBC compliant database. With the included VBA language, it's possible to build an entire database frontend using Excel. This is already true with Essbase, a leading OLAP database."

In your messge you say "DBForums is a place to ask questions, discuss ideas, etc."

I think my post follows in the lines of both. I have a lot of experience in developing database front-ends in Excel for serious clients like The National Bank of Canada, Bombardier, SCI, Gildan Activewear and others and I really don't need to promote my services.

I am posting on dbforums because some of my clients (including DBAs) have told me that visitors to your site could benefit from my experience.

I come in god faith to dbforums, I answer questions and I introduce topics on a subject that I master.

Those who are against Excel can answer my post but my purpose is not a debate on Excel that is used by very serious IT professional and millions of data analysts. My purpose is to share my knowledge on this democratic forum.

I work alone from my house and I have more than enough work so don't send clients my way.

I still feel that the thread in its original form is advertising, so I can not allow that to be restored "as is", but I can:

1) edit the post and your signature to remove the link to your web site, then restore the edited thread.
2) Censor the website here on DBForums and restore the thread "as is"
3) PM you the contents of the original message so you can edit it to create a new one

Let me know if one of these suits you, or if you have another proposal.

When you talk about removing my website address from my signature, are you going to ask the same thing from r937, Jezemine and others? Will it become part of the rules on dbforums?

My website offers hundreds of FREE tips on Excel and VBA and is visited by 5,000 unique visitors each day. A lot of them (students and other users) thank me and have never bought my workbooks or used my services.

Are you going to deprive dbforums visitors of this source of information because YOU judge that I advertise.

I also promote dbforums on my website knowing that some of your visitors offer their services for FREE and sometimes for a well deserved fee.

By nature a forum on Crystal Report promotes Crystal Report, a forum on Sybase promotes Sybase and a forum on Excel promotes Excel even negatively (see blindman on my thread).

I do promote the use of Excel because a lot of people don't have the resources (technology or finance) to afford expensive and complex anaylsis and reporting programs. I promote Excel because a lot of IT people don't have the time to help data users. Anything wrong with that?

I am 57 years old and I remember censorship (your words) in the 50's. I never thought that it would come back.

You are setting new rules. Make your decision but give me the right to an appeal above your head or public.

however, links to your own site are not appropriate in the body of the post

especially if not in direct response to a specific user's question (i will admit to linking to my own site occasionally, but only when it's to an article which explains the solution that somebody was looking for)

in your case, you started a thread promoting your site, and we find this to be over the line

I normally do not object to people linking to their own web sites as part of their signature. In the case of this particular posting/thread, it reads like an advertisement, it functions as an advertisement, and by allowing the web site to be mentioned anywhere in the posting (including the signature) I would be condoning that advertising, which I will not do.

In my opinion, you would be free to include links to any web site for additional explanation of any point you were making as a response to a question. You would be free to include a link to your web site in your sig as long as the associated post is not an advertisement for that web site or your services. That particular post reads like an advertisement to me, so I can't condone allowing any link on it, even in the signature.

This is a gray area, and one that requires subjective judgement because it is so close to being outright unacceptable. I have no quarrel with you, and other moderators have strongly encouraged me to give you the benefit of the doubt (which I think that I have done, I normally ban users that I perceive as spammers without discussion).

Yes, you can appeal my decision. You can PM me a phone number so that we can discuss how you can make that appeal.